Steny Hoyer: “let me say, so the Members understand where we are going to be I think at the end game, if we had continued our…”

“let me say, so the Members understand where we are going to be I think at the end game, if we had continued our discussions about how to resolve this, and so the public understands as well, our constituents understand, I believe we can agree, I believe the White House can agree, on a number for this bill that will still be more than one-half billion dollars under the President's request. I hope my colleagues heard that. I believe the White House is prepared to sign a bill that is half a billion, almost $600 million under what they submitted to this Congress. So it is not that they are asking, gee, we ought to include all of these additional dollars. It was, and I want to repeat, in the committee report issued by the majority in the Congress, the Republican majority. It says that their allocation was $1.3 billion too little to meet the priorities. Now, that was still, we understand, $800 million less than the President asked for, which was 2.2. They are adding 1.2 back. So there is still $100 million under what the committee report said they thought, the Republicans thought, was necessary to adequately fund this bill.”